The project provides two types of containers:

• Containerfile.ci: builds a really basic container, mostly used in Prow, exposing needed tools
• Containerfile.tests: based upon the previous one, allows to run some tests locally, or run the framework

Leveraging make, you can build the container on your own:

$ make ci_ctx

In the examples bellow, the options will do:

• -w /home/prow: change the working directory to /home/prow
• -e HOME=/home/prow: switch prow user home directory location.
• -v ~/.ssh/id_ed25519:/home/prow/.ssh/id_ed25519: exposes your private SSH key.
• -v .:/home/prow/ci-framework: exposes the project content in /home/prow/ci-framework in the container.
• -v ~/inventory.yml:/home/prow/ci-framework/inventory.yml: an example of how you can override the inventory.yml.
• -v ~/custom_files:/home/prow/custom_files: mounts the custom_files directory. This is useful for incorporating various files that cifmw requires, such as multiple inventory files, ci_token, and pull_secret.
• --uidmap 1000:0:1 --uidmap 0:1:1000: sets up user ID mappings for improved security.
• --security-opt label=disable: needed for SELinux environment.

By default, the CI Framework runs against localhost. If you intend to run the framework against localhost from within the container, you must provide a custom inventory in order to let ansible use the network connection instead of the local default set in the provided inventory. For instance, you want an inventory like this:

:caption: custom/inventory.yml
:linenos:
all:
  hosts:
    localhost:
      ansible_ssh_common_args='-o StrictHostKeyChecking=no'

And then mount it in the container, as shown bellow.

Since the container's primary goal was to run tests, without any interactive shell, the $HOME set to the used is the same as in Prow environment: /. While the proposed commands exports the $HOME environment variables, some processes may not get it right.

In order to switch the user's home directory, we strongly advise running this as soon as you are in the container:

[container]$ sudo usermod -d /home/prow prow

This should then ensure SSH, molecule and other things are consuming the right location.

Depending on your Linux version, you may or may not need to pass the --security-opt. This mostly depends on your SELinux status.

[laptop]$ podman run --rm -ti \
    -w /home/prow \
    -e HOME=/home/prow \
    -v ~/.ssh/id_ed25519:/home/prow/.ssh/id_ed25519 \
    -v $(pwd):/home/prow/ci-framework \
    -v ~/custom_files:/home/prow/custom_files \
    --security-opt label=disable \
    localhost/cifmw:latest bash

[laptop]$ podman run --rm -ti \
    -w /home/prow \
    -e HOME=/home/prow \
    -v ~/.ssh/id_ed25519:/home/prow/.ssh/id_ed25519 \
    -v $(pwd):/home/prow/ci-framework \
    -v ~/custom_files:/home/prow/custom_files \
    --security-opt label=disable \
    localhost/cifmw:latest bash

It is required to have podman-machine configured with the home directory mounted.
Be aware that running this process will remove all existing images and containers,
including those that were preinstalled or already exist on your system.

[macos]$ podman machine stop podman-machine-default
[macos]$ podman machine rm podman-machine-default
[macos]$ podman machine init -v $HOME:$HOME
[macos]$ podman machine start

[macos]$ podman run --rm -ti \
    -w /home/prow \
    -e HOME=/home/prow \
    -v ~/.ssh/id_ed25519:/home/prow/.ssh/id_ed25519 \
    -v $(pwd):/home/prow/ci-framework \
    -v ~/custom_files:/home/prow/custom_files \
    --uidmap 1000:0:1 --uidmap 0:1:1000 \
    localhost/cifmw:latest bash

Note that you can replace podman command by docker with the same flags.